Caroline & Conor Go RTW

Is Your Mama a Llama?

By Caroline & Conor

Some pictures from our visit to a llama farm in the Sacred Valley near Cusco, Peru.

Crepes in Cusco

By Conor

Down the street from our hotel in Cusco there is a great crepe restaurant.  My favorite is the banana caramel (shown above).  It comes with a chocolate crepe, banana, caramel, whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, strawberries and chocolate sauce.  Caroline and I finished it in less than a minute!

On the Trail of the Incas

By Caroline

After Ecuador, we went to Cusco, Peru, the capital of the Inca Empire.  The Spanish destroyed most of the Inca buildings.  But outside the city there are Inca ruins - and many of the Spanish buildings in the city were built on top of Inca foundations.

Here’s Cusco’s main plaza (built by the Spanish)…

An Inca wall that the Spanish built on top of…

Some llamas in the narrow streets…

And some Inca ruins outside Cusco…

Cloud Forest Visit

By Caroline & Conor

After returning from the Galapagos, our next excursion was to the town of Mindo, Ecuador, in the Cloud Forest.  We met “Friendly” the dog…

Visited a Butterfly Farm…

Went birdwatching (“the worst morning of my life,” says Caroline)…

Drank a lot of fruit smoothies at our favorite juice bar…

And, best of all, went zip-lining through the Cloud Forest on a course that had ten zip-lines!

Galapagos Pictures

We’ve got some posts coming about our trip to the Galapagos, but in the meantime, here are some of our favorite pictures.  It was a great trip!

And there are lots more pictures here.

Off To The Galapagos

By Caroline and Conor

We leave on Monday morning (August 4) for our trip to the Galapagos, so it will be about ten days before our next update.

Road Trip

By Caroline

We recently got back from a little side trip we took to Cotopaxi, Quilotoa and Banos.  The trip took three days and two nights.

The first day we rode to Cotopaxi, which is a volcano.  We were supposed to climb up part of it, but the wind was so strong it blew Conor over.

After Cotopaxi, we arrived in Quilotoa after a “45-minute drive” that took over two hours.  Quilotoa is a poor little town in the mountains.  It has a volcano with a beautiful lake in its crater.  We hiked down to see it.

Once we got to the bottom we decided to ride donkey back up because the indigenous people said it would take 30 minutes to go back up on a donkey - and 2 hours to hike back up.

Riding donkeys was really fun but also scary because they would walk so close to the edge of the path.

When we got back to the crater rim we left for Banos.

In Banos (which means “baths”) we stayed at a really beautiful hotel.  It was in Banos that Conor and I started naming every dog we saw.  There was one dog we named “Dust Storm,” but soon we changed his name to “Danger Storm.”  Here is the story of “Danger Storm.”

Conor had named most of the dogs up to this point and I wanted to name one.  So I named the next dog we saw “Dust Storm.”  He was a little fluffy dog, and he looked friendly.  Conor approached Dust Storm and in a little voice said, “Hello, Dust Storm.”

Then Dust Storm leapt at Conor and the dog started barking and tried to attack us.  Everyone one street saw what happened and started laughing.  After the “attack” we changed Dust Storm’s name to “Danger Storm.”

After a night in the hotel in Banos we went to the hot baths that are heated by a volcano.  My favorite thing to do was to stand under the cold water from a nearby waterfall and then jump into the hot baths.

Before we left Banos we rode a zip-line over a huge river canyon.  I was scared but did it anyway.  After that we headed back to Quito.  It was nice to be back at the hotel where we had been staying.